Down in Jungleland: The Red Pierrot Mystery

The little butterfly was joined by a partner. Together, they chased each other up and down the same bed of chillies until, hey presto, they discovered the English basil growing thickly in a bed a stone’s throw away. The racing and chasing was interspersed with long pit stops for refueling on the basil-flower nectar. In the garden that has more vegetables than flowers, this was their favourite bar. I was hoping to get an intimate click, but alas, I wasn’t lucky. Below the basil, ajwain (carom seeds) was growing with its thick and succulent leaves, but so far there’s been no sign of a happy (butterfly) event there.

When the eggs, laid on the food plant, hatch, the caterpillar burrows itself inside the leaves (like an infestation). It’s not a particularly prepossessing creature — a yellowish grub with black spots and spindly hairs. Safe within the leaf, it gets back on the leaf and wriggles out its cocoon when it’s ready to hatch.

Then, after, what I can only assume, was a three-day honeymoon, the couple just vanished. Perhaps, they had used the garden only for honeymooning and its bar services — perhaps, their food plant was growing in neighbouring gardens where they could start their families. I’m still examining the leaves of the plants they hovered around but haven’t found any sign of eggs or caterpillars. I wonder where they have gone, if they are alive. And hope that next summer, the mystery will manifest itself again.

The red Pierrot belongs to the clan of Lycaenidae, or the blues, which are the small blue, lilac and purple butterflies you disturb while walking through grass.

Eggs, like little pearls, hatch out on the food plant and these little bingeing machines emerge. They could be dressed like bird droppings or covered with spines or fine hair, which will make you scratch like a monkey if you touch them, or they are as gaudily coloured as a scary clown, warning all comers to maintain distance. Some will even rear up cobra style and flick out what looks like a forked tongue at you if you disturb them. And all they do through their gluttonous existence is eat. You might feel nauseous watching their little jaws saw relentlessly up and down the sides of a leaf as they demolish it. It’s like a hamburger-eating contest gone viral. Naturally they grow — and how — into barrage balloons.

Then, struck by their conscience, they stop eating, and do penance by spinning themselves a silken cocoon and performing the caterpillar-equivalent of meditation and yoga. It pays off, because within a week or so, they metamorphose. The gross, obese creature now emerges, timorously, a delicate and beautiful flying machine, with a watch-spring proboscis and big dark eyes. From now on, it will only sip tiny amounts of nectar (and umm…maybe a lot of fermenting fruit juice, rum and dung!) and gladden your heart as it flits and flirts in your garden.

But to let you into a devilish little secret: even as a pupa, the binging hasn’t stopped. What happens is that the cells that formed the gross caterpillar break down into a “soup” and the butterfly cells — lying dormant so far — suddenly get booted up and take their nourishment from this soup, while building the various parts of the butterfly.

But it makes you wonder: how is it possible that from something so gross and greedy, something so ethereal and delicate can emerge? If only, that could be true for our own species…